Dressers, bookcases, and similar types of furniture often include drawers. These types of furniture are often free-standing, and very often are relatively narrow front-to-back, which makes them subject to tipping over (back-to-front). When fully loaded, this tendency to tip over can be dangerous. This is also true for relatively shorter pieces of furniture that may have a height less then an adult but taller than a child. There have been instances of children climbing upon open or partially-opened drawers in dressers, or climbing onto shelving, where the weight of the child has caused the furniture to tip over and seriously injure or kill the child, or where the furniture tips and an item stored on the furniture slides or falls forward off the furniture and onto the child.
The industry solution to this problem, if one is provided to the consumer at all, is to include a tether and a screw with the furniture being purchased. The consumer is expected to connect the furniture to the rearwardly-adjacent wall by a single screw provided by the manufacturer. However, consumers rarely locate the furniture such that the tether can be secured to a stud in the wall, even assuming the wall is made of drywall, and instead locate the furniture where it is convenient and desirable. Accordingly, the holding force, if the device is attached at all by the consumer, is insufficient to prevent the furniture from tipping over. For other types of walls, such as brick or stone, the screw provided by the manufacturer is not suited for attachment to such a wall.